Respite
by Scented-Marker-Sniffer
Summary: His impossible quest had nearly pushed him onto his knees. The Wanderer truly was a fool...


**... There's so much I want to say about this game that I had trouble getting it all into one story. **

**Well, anyway, this is my first story for Shadow of the Colossus, so reviews are appreciated but certainly not required. Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy!**

* * *

The air was still and silent, save for the occasional distant flapping of a bird's wings, the neighs and snuffles of a mare, and the barely-there breathing of a dark-haired young man.

Said young man was curled painfully on his side within the glowing aura surrounding one of many of the god Dormin's shrines, scattered at random across the Forbidden Lands. How he had found himself at this one, located in the middle of a vast plain, when he was supposed to be looking for a dried lake, the archer didn't know.

Wander was sore—so sore—but he didn't want to rest. He didn't _need_ to rest. Even stopping to sleep for a mere hour or two seemed like a terrible betrayal to his beloved Mono, who was still waiting in that awful temple for him to save her. He was impossibly tired, but restless; he had, after all, taken on the first eight Colossi without even a wink of sleep, so who was to say he couldn't repeat the process? He _needed _to save Mono. His very _life _depended on it.

However, his body protested. When he had attempted to push himself up from his prayer at the shrine_ ("Please let the next Colossus be easy... Please let me live through this next battle... Please let it _not_ have poison breath!"),_ he collapsed, amidst Agro's worried snuffling. When he forced himself to sit up, the small action just by itself caused such a wave of vertigo that the Wanderer proceeded to lean over and painfully retch out what little that remained of yesterday's meal of lizard tails and dirty fruit. His lungs burned like fire from the last battle, and when he spat in an attempt to somewhat cleanse his mouth, his saliva was red.

The Wanderer was rash and reckless. The Wanderer had little common sense. Some even called the Wanderer a fool. However, the boy had his intelligences, and at that moment he finally decided to let his grave need for rest outweigh his impossible mission, but only under the grounds that proceeding to his next Colossus in this condition would only get him killed, which would be of little help to Mono. So, grudgingly, he settled himself into the fetal position, groaning vaguely in pain when he did so.

Despite his exhaustion, rest refused to come easily. He didn't like being still in this place—it felt like things were watching him, dark, evil things, things that whispered in his ear, _You shouldn't have come here, _things that threatened to engulf him entirely if he stayed much longer.

Wander at least tried to disregard his worries_. I'm at Dormin's shrine,_ he argued with himself, _They're not going to let me die at Their shrine. _

He wearily rolled onto his back to stare at the clouds that never seemed to change, the everlasting daylight. He had no idea how long he'd been here—it could have been days, it could have been weeks; gods forbid, it could have been years. He didn't know. Then again, it didn't seem he knew a lot these days.

Sleep remained evasive, which frustrated the Wanderer. The longer he stayed up, the longer he would need to sleep, and the longer he needed to sleep, the longer it would take to save Mono. He rolled back to his side, facing towards the wall of the shrine. The bricks of the altar were not comfortable, especially on the Wanderer's injuries, and certainly there were softer places to sleep, like in the encompassing heady warmth of the forest or in one of the many meadows he had found... But sleeping, being _vulnerable,_ in the middle of these lands, these lands that held no hazards at all unless he rode out looking for them but still felt so _dangerous,_ was not a risk Wander was willing to take, and so he remained.

Sleep sounded good, actually, the archer mused, somewhat blearily. Maybe if he got just an hour or so of rest, he could shake the strange maladies that had begun to plague him more and more persistently.

The Forbidden Lands were surprisingly warm for the most part, but even the comfortable breeze seemed to cut through him; Wander wrapped himself in his thin poncho and curled up tighter in a feeble means of protection against the wind. He hadn't even seen nineteen summers, but he felt absolutely ancient, older than the mountains he felled. His once strong, youthful features had become pale, drawn, and marred with the strange dark streaks that crept up his neck and arms (just dirt, they're _dirt,_ Wander convinced himself, even after the streaks refused to wash away). His shining auburn hair had darkened to a purplish black. His hands were covered with swollen, infected wounds that refused to heal and his clothes were tattered and spotted with the blood of human and Colossi. He felt ill, he felt _exhausted_, but at the same time, each Colossus seemed to fall before him with an increasing amount of ease.

He didn't know _what_ was happening to him.

The foolish Wanderer truly should have realized. He should have realized, even as he toppled Colossus after Colossus, that it was a losing battle he was fighting, that this simply _wasn't worth it,_ that returning home without his beloved could never be more painful than what he had condemned himself to here.

But Wander was a young man, caught in the inescapable vice of youthful infatuation, and concerned with his fate he was not.

At last, the boy finally began to feel drowsy as the familiar warmth of his steed's body curled up behind him. It was okay. He was okay. A couple hours of sleep—how was it going to hurt?—and then he could set off once more to find his next Colossus, and when he defeated it those strange black tentacles were going to rip through him again, but he wasn't going to worry, and when he felt like he was losing himself, he was not going to fret about Dormin's chilling words, and when those Colossi looked at him brokenly in their dying moments, he was not going to feel guilty, because this was worth it, all this was worth it, it was, it_ was._

One tear managed to escape his otherworldly bright eyes before he drifted off.

After all, the longer he stayed up, the longer it would take to save Mono.

And he _needed _to save Mono.

His life depended on it.


End file.
